Michael Fowler (FGCU) Rituals

There are many different purposes for rituals around the world. Rituals can be conducted by a person, group, culture, and are commonly used for a religious purpose in most countries. There are some extreme rituals that are performed by cultures in Africa where human sacrifice is performed with music, more commonly rituals are used in coming of age ceremonies. There are also less extreme rituals that are performed everyday by Americans. Growing up playing the sport of ice hockey, I have been around and performed many of my own pre game rituals. Before every hockey game I would execute the same rituals over and over. These rituals consist of taping both of my hockey sticks very precisely so I know I would perform at my best, listening to that same hockey pump up playlist on my iPod, and a pregame stretch and jog. I recently just participated in the ACHA Division 3 National Championship hockey tournament with my FGCU hockey team. Since this tournament was to crown a national champion, I made sure I performed my pregame rituals. After each game I would win I would do the same thing I did before the previous game. I we lost a game I would change it up slightly. For example, I would still tape my stick before the game but I would use black tape instead of white that time to hide the puck when I have it on my stick. I guess you could say there is a little bit of the superstition role being played. As I would look around the locker room before every game I would notice every one of my teammate’s different rituals. One of my teammates would take a shot of 5-hour energy before every game as a ritual to be prepared. Others would drink energy drinks and talk about what needed to be done as preparation but there this one teammate who had the strangest ritual. He would tie and retie his skates until he felt that it was perfect so he could skate at his best. During intermission in the locker room he would untie his skates and then retie them again before going back on the ice for the next period. When I noticed this ritual thought it was crazy! No matter what country you live in or what religion or culture you are there are many rituals being performed.

This entry was posted on 23. April 2009 at 08:02 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.